Leo Group

Two of the nation's largest privately held advertising companies, Leo Group of Chicago, owner of the Leo Burnett agency, and New York-based MacManus Group are expected to announce an alliance and possible merger, Advertising Age said Tuesday on its Web site. The report said the alliance would be announced today. Such a combination would create what Ad Age said would be the world's fourth-largest advertising organization, behind Britain's WPP Group and just ahead of Japan's Dentsu.

The parent companies of two big advertising agencies that represent such major clients as Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and General Motors are merging to create a global new agency with more than $1.7 billion in revenue. Chicago-based Leo Group and New York-based MacManus Group, which own Leo Burnett Co. and D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, are merging into a new company that initially will be called BDM. The Chicago-based company will become the world's fourth-largest advertising company.

The parent companies of two big advertising agencies that represent such major clients as Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and General Motors are merging to create a global new agency with more than $1.7 billion in revenue. Chicago-based Leo Group and New York-based MacManus Group, which own Leo Burnett Co. and D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, are merging into a new company that initially will be called BDM. The Chicago-based company will become the world's fourth-largest advertising company.

Two of the nation's largest privately held advertising companies, Leo Group of Chicago, owner of the Leo Burnett agency, and New York-based MacManus Group are expected to announce an alliance and possible merger, Advertising Age said Tuesday on its Web site. The report said the alliance would be announced today. Such a combination would create what Ad Age said would be the world's fourth-largest advertising organization, behind Britain's WPP Group and just ahead of Japan's Dentsu.

Eastman Kodak Co. said Friday that it was overhauling the heart of its business, combining consumer photo operations, high-tech commercial imaging and international business. The huge new section will be called the Imaging Group. "Our challenge is to restructure the resources of these groups into a customer-focused team," said Leo Thomas, group vice president and president of the Imaging Group. The new group at Rochester, N.Y.

You can bring a play to a theater company, but you can't make it talk--unless you have the right actors. Director-actress Patricia Lee Willson has for some time wanted to bring Mark Stein's sweet, brilliant play "At Long Last Leo" to her Los Angeles theater home, Group Repertory Theatre. Perhaps sensing that Group Rep required an artistic boost--which it did--Willson has finally got "Leo" on stage, and her current cast is at perfect pitch.

The turmoil over Europe's fast-emerging, multibillion-dollar digital pay TV market is intensifying. In recent weeks, media companies have announced programming packages that will bring digital pay TV to Germany, Scandinavia and the Benelux countries--Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg--for the first time this summer. At the same time, an alliance of media giants aimed at the Continent's large and lucrative German market has all but collapsed due to internal differences.